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Friday, October 12, 2007

ON NURSE COSTUMES AND HALLOWEEN

This just came in from the Center for Nursing Advocacy.

Naughty nurses too scary for Halloween

Nurses say "naughty nurse" costumes are too spooky even for Halloween--and they're conjuring a spell to exorcise the sexy demons.

The Center for Vampire Slaying Nursing Advocacy leads a torch-wielding mob urging all who make, sell, or wear the costumes to end the naughty nightmare. The group says the stereotype that nurses are sponge-bath sex zombies has bedeviled real nurses for decades. A monstrous example: the lingerie-like "nurse" costumes worn at Halloween.

"The Hospital shouldn't be a House of Horror," rasped Sandy "Scream" Summers, the Center's executive director, and a reported Wiccan. "The naughty nurse is a corpse bride. She scares away the resources we need to resolve the nursing shortage--which is sending thousands to the graveyard. Real nurses save lives with advanced skills. But having a naughty nurse is as dangerous as having an operation performed by Doctors Itchy and Scratchy," said Summers, laughing insidiously.

The Center has been haunting major costume retailers, including Party City, 3 Wishes and Costume Express, urging them to leave naughty nurses out of their ghastly Halloween marketing plans. The group is also asking consumers to tell some other tale from the crypt. It notes that the Southern Poverty Law Center's highly regarded "Teaching Tolerance" campaign has likewise urged the public to reconsider harmful stereotypes in its Halloween costumes.

"This is no 'X-File,'" croaked Andrea "Blood" Brassard, the Center's board chair, a nursing professor at The George Washington University. "We know what the problem here is: fusing the image of nursing with easy workplace sexuality. When nurses don't get respect, the result is skeletal staffing and the curse of the mummy's mandatory overtime. That can mean worse patient outcomes--a real dawn of the dead."

The Center does not fear the sexual element of the costumes. But it says the nursing theme discourages nurses, encourages sexual abuse, and trivializes the need for more clinical and educational resources. Last year, the Center protested bone-chilling naughty nurse posters used in a Halloween blood drive to promote the horror film "Saw III."

Brassard had a suggestion for anyone who missed the naughty nurse at Halloween. "Try dressing up as the 'naughty nurse''s patient," she cackled. "The gown ties in the back, but don't forget that cute little toe tag the morgues use! For more fun, try post-autopsy!"

Center leaders declined to comment on reported links between the group's Baltimore base and unexplained nocturnal events at the nearby grave of Edgar Allan Poe. However, an informed source nervously dismissed rumors that the group's headquarters was a deserted mansion filled with strange black birds and a telltale thumping sound.

The Center for Nursing Advocacy, founded in 2001, is an international non-profit organization based in Baltimore that seeks to increase public understanding of the central, front-line role nurses play in modern health care. The focus of the Center is to promote more accurate, balanced and frequent media portrayals of nurses and increase the media's use of nurses as expert sources.